Trump reportedly told aide, ‘You don’t know anything about the boxes’
Donald Trump didn't just reportedly use classified materials as scratch pads, he also allegedly told an aide to play dumb when talking to the FBI.
Sept. 19, 2023, 7:00 AM CDT
By Steve Benen
By any fair measure, all of the criminal cases against Donald Trump are serious, though one seems like it’ll be the easiest to prosecute. As Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana recently put it, the former president’s classified documents case looks like “a slam dunk.”
And while that assessment seemed more than fair under the circumstances, that doesn’t mean the scandal can’t get worse. ABC News reported that the Republican’s longtime assistant, Molly Michael, told federal investigators that he “repeatedly wrote to-do lists for her” on documents marked as classified.
In other words, according to ABC News’ reporting, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, Trump had a habit of using classified materials as effectively scratch pads.
But as remarkable as these allegations are, there was another element in the story that stood out for me:
Just so we’re all clear, “the boxes” referred to the containers filled with sensitive materials that Trump improperly took to his glorified country club after leaving the White House. His longtime assistant was almost certainly familiar with “the boxes,” which makes it all the more notable that the former president allegedly told his aide, “You don’t know anything about the boxes” after learning that Michael was poised to speak to the FBI.
It’s almost as if Trump was concerned about his assistant telling law enforcement the truth, so he took the legally dubious step of subtly encouraging her to play dumb.
Indeed, it’s reminiscent of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson being told, “The less you remember, the better,” as part of her Jan. 6 testimony.
Last month, after Trump tried to publicly discourage Georgia’s former Republican lieutenant governor from testifying before a Fulton County grand jury, New York magazine’s Jon Chait noted, “What can certainly be ascertained, without any legal training, is that this is not the behavior of an innocent man.” Similarly, innocent people — who have no idea that they’re engaged in wrongdoing — generally don’t feel the need to tell assistants, “You don’t know anything about the boxes” before they talk to the FBI.
